Amy Gleason, the government worker the Trump administration has said is actually in charge of Elon Musk’s signature Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) program, has a second role at a separate agency, according to court documents.
Since February, Gleason has been detailed to the Department of Health and Human Services, and on March 4 she signed a document formally accepting a role as “expert / consultant” at the agency, which oversees marquee government efforts like Medicare and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The latest disclosure, first reported in Politico, came in a federal lawsuit from the American Federation of Labor and other union groups who are seeking to block DOGE from accessing sensitive Department of Labor data, arguing suck access violates the Privacy and Administrative Procedure Acts.
It adds further confusion to the leadership structure at DOGE.
In a separate case, Gleason filed a sworn statement describing herself as “full-time” administrator of the U.S. Doge Service (USDS), adding, “Elon Musk does not work at USDS. I do not report to him, and he does not report to me. To my knowledge, he is a Senior Advisor to the White House.”
Donald Trump has described Elon Musk as the leader of the DOGE project, while White House officials initially refused to confirm who was in charge and later announced in late February that Gleason was running the show without Musk’s involvement.
Determining who runs DOGE and what their responsibilities are weighs heavily over multiple lawsuits against the project, many of which cite concerns over sensitive data being shared across departments and alleged violations of proper administrative procedure.
If Musk is in charge after all, he could face additional disclosure and conflict of interest concerns related to DOGE, given his extensive business ties to the federal government and agencies under scrutiny by the cost-cutting effort.
Most recently, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday that DOGE’s attempts to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development “likely violated the Constitution in multiple ways.”
The decision, by U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland, granted a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocks DOGE from access to any USAID systems and from doing “any work” related to shutting down the agency.
The DOGE project has also faced scrutiny for quietly deleting or amending records of many of the biggest savings the project has claimed to achieve for the federal government.
